Mending Wall
by Objective Mistress
Summary: "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know, what I was walling in or walling out," - Robert Frost.  Brennan builds walls around her for protection, but what happens to those walls with Booth's girlfriend in the picture?  Do they crumble or adapt?  One-shot


_**Okay, I promise I'm working on the "What's a Year" sequel, "Just a Year," but I just needed a break before diving into that storyline.**_

_**For this one-shot, I've decided to do what I do best: write Brennan. So, this story is all about Brennan, from her perspective. A bit of a change from the two stories I've finished, but I think it's a very refreshing change and (hopefully) insightful. For those a bit cautious of my use of a poem in this: rest assured, it simply helps to provide structure. And if it isn't your thing, I ask you to give it a try; I'm really proud of what I've written here.**_

_**WARNING: There is a bit of Season 6 in here as I reference Booth's girlfriend but that's it.**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" or Bones. **_

_**Twitter - ObjectiveMiss**_

**- - - - - - - - - -B&B- - - - - - - - - -**

_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,_

"Bones, are you even listening?" Booth waved his hand in from of her face.

"I'm extremely attentive," she snaps. But truth be told, her mind had been elsewhere; certainly not focused on the conversation in her Jeffersonian office.

For the last few weeks, her profession has not only been anthropologist, but a mason also. Meticulously, brick by brick, repairing the walls she had been prepared to bring down to the ground with the force endowed by gravity. But there she sits, laying a fine layer of mortar to suck the stones back into their defensive positions.

_That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,__  
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,  
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast._

"So like I said, we can finish the paperwork up on Monday," he toyed with a _Homo habilis _jaw model on a shelf that was used to help explain why a meat diet made humans smarter. Of course, mentioning something like this would only bring up another vegetarianism debate; one that I would not be in the mindset to have. Hadn't I mentioned multiple times not to mess with my things?

"Why can't we finish it tonight?"

"I'm picking up Hannah," he said nonchalantly. Of course, with her lack of experience with social cues, Brennan was completely unsure whether he meant to down play it, or if he simply didn't accent in order to make it seem un-notable.

Evidently, picking up his significant other was a task for only two. Apparently, the inclusion of a "third wheel" (which would dramatically increase the stability of a two wheeled vehicle) is awkward an unwieldy. Angela explained it as a sort of conflict of interest; competition for mates, however primal, still creates insecurity in a monogamous relationship. But she had told Hannah (as clearly as one could manage), that she wasn't interested in a romantic relationship with Booth.

For once, Brennan didn't know if she was telling the truth or not.

_The work of hunters is another thing:__  
I have come after them and made repair  
__Where they have left not one stone on a stone,  
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,_

"Oh…" hastily, she shuffled through some important looking documents, trying to maintain a façade of indifference.

But she can't help it. Jealously isn't rational; but that didn't stop it from gathering inside her like pressure in a shaken soda. It scared her how easily her walls could be knocked down now a days; every action of his seemed to send the stones tumbling to the ground. And with _her_ in the picture, Brennan was picking up more stones than ever.

"It won't be a big deal doing them Monday anyway, there's no way we'll have a case that soon," he finally places the mandible back to its original resting place. "…We're doing really well together…Hannah and me."

Unsure of why he chose to share this tidbit of information, she keeps her head downcast. It was as if he were trying to push her buttons and pull on her levers. Why? Perhaps it was to drive her hidden feelings out in the open. Or, perhaps to make sure that those emotions never surface again.

_To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,  
No one has seen them made or heard them made,_

When one builds walls around oneself, odd things happen. It seems that securing the self against emotional threats goes against the natural order of human socializing.

People talk.

"…We were thinking of having a party at her place…"

People get closer.

"…just to be sure everything is out in the open and it would be a real blast…"

People share secrets.

"…and we thought it might be a good way to have her get closer again with her dad. They had a big fight when she left for Afghanistan."

"That sounds great," she mumbles.

Consciously, she raises her defensive shields. Like any wall, her wall falls victim to erosion of water and wind, the stones falling on their own accord. But as the walls keeper, it is her job to pick up the pieces, making sure that it is safe from intrusion.

_But at spring mending-time we find them there.  
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;_

"I know that Hannah and I…you know…being together has been a bit awkward," he seems uncomfortable at this fact, changing his footing multiple times.

_And on a day we meet to walk the line_

"…and I know that how I fe-" he stops, thinking for a moment before continuing. "_Felt_, about you helped cause that. After so many years, we're back with the line we can't cross. Maybe it was my mistake crossing the line…"

_And set the wall between us once again._

He looks up, sure that their eyes meet. "But in the end, I think you might have been right."

In his pause, she scans over what she could have possibly been right about. With the case theories alone that she could throw out in a single day, it would be impossible to trace it back like breadcrumbs to the "correct" thing she had said.

_We keep the wall between us as we go._

"We've got a great thing going," he continues. "We're partners…friends…what more would we want?"

What more? It was he who just a year ago had proposed that they escalate their partnership to something of a more intimate nature. It was also he, that preached about the "never ending nature of love" and such; since when did "never" constitute one mere solar cycle? She felt torn, coming back from her island adventures comfortable in her own skin and feelings. But yet, he had also changed, moving on as he had promised almost one year ago.

"I suppose nothing," she taps a few buttons, setting the computer to shut down after it finished backing up her files to the Jeffersonian servers.

_To each the boulders that have fallen to each.  
__And some are loaves and some so nearly balls__  
We have to use a spell to make them balance:  
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'_

In silence, they stood; awkwardness creeping in like unwanted drafts in the middle of winter that slide slyly under an unsealed door.

Once again, she had to hang on to her walls, just to keep from tell him what she really thought. To say that Hannah was driving a stake into their professional relationship. To say that Hannah was driving a stake into their personal relationship. To say that she found the woman unintelligent, uninteresting, and the very annoying fact that her idea of innovative journalism was banal at best.

The best walls are built with the best materials, selected to withstand the test of time. Brennan's used to be an iron fortress surrounded by a minefield and crocodile infested moat; now it was but a sandcastle threatened by the rising tide.

_We wear our fingers rough with handling them.  
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,  
One on a side. It comes to little more:_

"Parker still wants you to come to his basketball game," Booth helps turn out her lamp in the corner.

"Can't Hannah go?" she tries to hide the disgust from her voice.

He sighs heavily, picking up his suit jacket as they go. "Parks doesn't want her there. He keeps insisting that you come."

That must have been hard to admit, knowing that his son doesn't approve of his mate. Of course, knowing how much his offspring meant to him, the youngster's advice must play a role in his…female companions.

_There where it is we do not need the wall:  
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.  
My apple trees will never get across  
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him._

Side by side, they walked down to the parking garage together. After the Gravedigger…well…one never looks at a deserted multi-tiered concrete box the same again. He guides her to her car, ever the chivalrous knight in FBI standard issue body armor.

"Thanks," he helps her to open her door.

"For what?"

"For being understanding."

"Of what?"

"Of Hannah and me."

Brennan musters a smile, thankfully sliding into the driver's seat. "I will not stand in your way," she hastily slams the door shut.

_He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'._

"Goodnight Bones," he says, despite the pane of glass between them.

It isn't what he says, rather, what he doesn't.

_Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder  
If I could put a notion in his head:  
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it  
Where there are cows?_

As she drives, her mind wanders.

What if they didn't have a line between them? At one point, it was just a line drawn by a stick in the sand. Now, it was an official line of white sporting field paint; a referee watches manically for any infraction.

What if she didn't wall herself away? What if she felt free enough to give love freely to those that warranted it?

In reality, her walls held her insecurities in, and Booth out.

_But here there are no cows._

She had no reason to hold to hold him at arm's length…well, now she did with the complications his romantic entanglement caused.

_Before I built a wall I'd ask to know__  
What I was walling in or walling out,  
And to whom I was like to give offence._

Brennan fights the urge to call him up. She misses the evenings they would spend together. She misses the meals at the diner, having him pick her up for work…she missed him. She had offended him, turning him and his love away over a year ago. She had simply walled him out.

_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,  
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,  
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather  
He said it for himself. I see him there  
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top  
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed._

For a while she had waited for him to make the first move. So show that the feelings she only had notions he possessed were indeed true. And he had after the retelling of that first fateful case and the kiss that almost was. He had been ready to strike; ready to hold her hand as the tore down her barriers together. Like the Berlin Wall, it would have to be torn down the people; she would have to do it. But now, Booth had dropped his stone, his stance once again contently passive. It was her turn to pull a stone from the wall to fashion into a Clovis point for battle.

_He moves in darkness as it seems to me,  
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.  
He will not go behind his father's saying,  
And he likes having thought of it so well_

Finally, she arrives home, shedding her bag and jacket. But the steady buzz of her cell phone breaks her satisfied thoughtlessness. It was Booth.

"Hello," she holds the phone to her year with one risen shoulder.

"Hey Bones, you left your umbrella in my car. It might rain tomorrow, do you want me to bring it over?''

"You're busy, it's fine to wait."

"See you Monday then-"

"Wait," she tries to muster her courage.

"Yes?"

"Never mind."

_He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."_

**- - - - - - - - - -B&B- - - - - - - - - -**

_**Like I said, different than what I'm used to, but I really enjoyed writing this. I hope this doesn't ever happen, but it was a fun scenario to toy with. **_

_**As my mother spray painted on the Berlin Wall:**_

_**"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know**_

_**What I was walling in or walling out,"**_

_**Please drop me a review, I'd love to know what you thought, love or hate. Reviews help me to shape future pieces that I will post here. Thanks for reading!**_

_**Twitter - ObjectiveMiss**_


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